Quotes About Compassion

It was no easy matter to induce her to think and to feel that the curly-headed boy, who stood by her side, and even leaned on her lap; who was loved by little Tommy, and who loved little Tommy in turn; sustained to her only the relation of a chattel. I was more than that, and she felt me to be more than that.

I esteem myself a good, persistent hater of injustice and oppression, but my resentment ceases when they cease, and I have no heart to visit upon children the sins of their fathers.

I felt some relief in contemplating the resting places of the dead, where there was an end to all distinctions between rich and poor, white and colored, high and low.

I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant, but may my "right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.

There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy; hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

Few are the giants of the soul who actually feel that the human race is their family circle.

Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.

There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival.

And if a friend does you wrong, then say: I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to YOURSELF, however--how could I forgive that!

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.

Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.

What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering

Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse. (What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.)

What do you consider the most humane? - To spare someone shame. What is the seal of liberation? - To no longer be ashamed in front of oneself.

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives acts and experiences otherwise than we do?

You shall love beyond yourselves some day! So first, learn to love. And for that you have to drink the bitter cup of your love.

The worst mutilation of man that can be imagined presented as the good man.

For man to be redeemed from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms. Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

Do I advise you to love thy neighbor? I suggest rather to escape from thy neighbor and to love those who are the farthest away from you. Higher than the love for thy neighbor is the love for the man who is distant and has still to come.